FIFA

Less than nine months on from overcoming odds of 5000-1 to win the Premier League. Claudio Ranieri has been ruthlessly sacked by Leicester City.

The Italian guided Leicester to an unprecedented title win back in May, and has guided them into the knockout stages of this seasons Champions League. They are languishing in 17th place in the League, and seemingly the players weren’t happy with his management this season.

This news has shown that not all fairytales have a happy ending, and the dreaded vote of confidence Ranieri received from the board just over two weeks ago now seems like it was pointless.

Maybe winning the title last season got to some of Leicester’s big players and made them too big for their boots. They sure as hell haven’t shown anywhere near the effort of performance than they did last season, it shows how big a loss N’golo Kante really was!

Fellow Italian, and Premier League winner with Manchester City, and former Leicester player, Roberto Mancini is the bookies favourite to take the reigns at The King Power. However it seems like a return for Nigel Pearson is what the players want as the rumours are that Mancini is not interested in the job.

It has been coming for a few weeks now and today we have the confirmation that former England player Gareth Southgate will be the new manager after a fairly impressive “trial shift” in recent weeks. Southgate has been in charge on an interim basis since the scandal that lead to Sam Allardyce stepping down in September and has won two games including a 3-0 over Scotland and a 2-0 win over Malta.

A panel of five interviewed the former England U-21’s Coach last week and it has been decided that he will be the man to take the England team forward. The team crashed out of Euro 2016 earlier this year in embarrassing circumstances under Roy Hodgson, something discussed in the Talk and Beans podcast a few months back.

The new Manager will be looking to take the team to the 2018 World Cup Finals and have significantly more success than his predecessors and is thought to have signed a four year deal which according to the Guardian will earn him between £1.5m and £2m a year.

Gareth Southgate has said that he is “extremely proud to be appointed England manager” . The new Manager also explained how he enjoyed working with the players over the previous four games and gave insight into his hopes going forward by stating “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with the players over these past four games and I think there’s huge potential. I’m determined to give everything I have to give the country a team that they’re proud of and one that they’re going to enjoy watching play and develop. For me, the hard work starts now”.

It will be interesting to see how this new regime will be, we just hope he doesn’t get England to a Shootout and fancy stepping up for a penalty himself.

The former Liverpool legend and captain has announced his retirement from football. Steven Gerrard captained the reds to many trophies including the 2005 UEFA Champions League and also captained England for a number of years. Gerrard joined the MLS in 2015 when he completed a move to LA Galaxy which ended when the midfielder left the club last month. The rumours about his future have been flowing ever since his departure from the American club, which included rumours of a managerial role at MK Dons, but the former player has said that the managerial role had come “a bit too soon” for him.

Steven Gerrard had a prolific career, especially at his boyhood club and was considered one of the best of his generation by many of his peers. Gerrard retires as the only player to this day to have scored in the FA Cup, League Cup, Champions League and UEFA Cup final, a feat that will be hard to top.

Speaking of his time as a player, Steven said “As a teenager I fulfilled my childhood dream by pulling on the famous red shirt of Liverpool, and when I made my debut against Blackburn Rovers in November 1998 I could never have imagined what would then follow over the next 18 years”.

Rumours of Gerrard heading back to Liverpool have been circulating for a while with Manager Jurgen Klopp recently stating that the club would always have space for the club legend. Now that the retirement has been officially announced the rumours have picked up again with suggestion that he will take up a role in the clubs academy.

When Klopp was asked about this he said “When there is something to announce, we will announce it. We’ve talked, that’s clear” and went on to add that “One day in the future, there will be something to announce—I’m pretty sure”.

What the future holds for Steven Gerrard is currently unknown to the public, but one thing for sure is his magnificent career for both club and country, whilst Gerrard may not have won any major tournaments for England (The again, How many fantastic English players have missed out since 1966?) he captained the ‘Three Lions’ at three major tournaments and his club and personal accomplishments sure do tell a tale of a fantastic player.

After just 67 days the England national football team is without a manager again. SamAllardyce had been appointed after RoyHodgson stepped down after England’s embarrassing exit in Euro 2016.

The job started so well for ‘Big Sam‘, who won his first and now only ever game in charge with a 1-0 over Slovakia in the World Cup Qualifiers.

Although, Allardyce won’t be best remembered for his 100% record but more so for the dramatic reasons behind his exit. The veteran manager was caught out by reporters of The Daily Telegraph who were posing as businessmen, after Sam offered them advice on how to “get around” transfer rules. The newspaper have since said the following about their investigation “We began looking into corruption in English football last year after receiving information about specific managers, officials and agents – before Allardyce was appointed England manager”. Negative comments were also recorded from the meeting that were aimed at the man that Allardyce had replaced, Roy Hodgson as well as Prince William and Prince Harry.

Sam Allardyce offered to step down as England manager to the FootballAssociation, who have since publically called his actions “inappropriate”. The FA have now got the task of replacing him and therefore possibly sticking with whoever was the second choice for the job before they appointed Sam. It’s an interesting time for football in general, with corruption at FIFA making headlines over recent years and investigations like these to see how corrupted the sport is in this country is also as far as transfers and business dealings.

The now unemployed manager was asked by reporters wether or not this would be his last management job in football, to which Sam replied “Who knows? We’ll wait and see.”